


Gasoline Summer

by I_Weave_Dreams



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, no magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-23 20:16:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20211577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_Weave_Dreams/pseuds/I_Weave_Dreams
Summary: Adam Parrish never planned to make a deal with the devil in the summer of his Junior year of high school. Break the heart of Aglionby’s most notorious bad boy, Ronan Lynch, at the End of Summer Party in exchange for five grand and a date with the girl he’s been pining over since Freshman year. What could go wrong?





	Gasoline Summer

**Author's Note:**

> **Hello! Just a heads up that I've tweaked some things about TRC canon universe. First, no magic here. Second, Aglionby is co-ed and Blue attends. I've also set this in Michigan because I love the idea of the boys in such a gorgeous setting. I feel like I've described a dusty, sun-baked Henrietta as many times as I can, lol. Give me evergreen and cozy midwestern falls, baby!**  
Also, you'll notice that I've altered some of the character's family and backgrounds a little. I want to keep them close to character, but I like the idea of changing things up a little. I like writing a fresh take while still keeping it familiar. 
> 
> **That's all for now! Enjoy <3 **

It hadn’t been Adam Parrish’s intention to make a deal with the devil in the summer of his Junior year of high school. Break the heart of Aglionby’s most notorious bad boy at the End of Summer Party in exchange for five grand and a date with the girl he’s been pining over since Freshman year. 

Joseph Kavinsky was hardly the devil, but his revenge plot, laid out in the dark patches of the sandy beach at the Beginning of Summer Bash, bonfires burning nearby like sacrificial pyres, the unrelenting bass booming and bodies swaying like a cultish trance, felt a bit like making a deal with the devil to Adam. He shivered in his secondhand chinos. Was he really going to do this?

If he’d known then what could happen, the turbulence this could create, how an entire world and an entire new life could be built up and burned down in the short span of three months, maybe he would have given Kavinsky a different answer.

Looking back, it’s hard to remember the 8 hours that had led up to this moment. When Summer was still a no-strings-attached promise. When Adam hadn’t been handed a torch and asked to set the world ablaze.

**8 Hours Before**

It was the last day of Junior year. The breezy Midwestern air pulsed with electricity. It hummed to the tune of 4,000 teenage hearts burning with the anticipation of three whole months of freedom. No teachers, no homework, no shoes, no shirts, no problem. Anything was possible for Aglionby Prep School’s finest. For most, this summer would be just like the others. Full of raucous house parties in their parents’ million dollar mansions. Early internships at Fortune 500 companies. Dazing on yachts. Lazing on private air crafts. 

The usual.

For 17-year-old Adam Parrish, it would be none of these. Scholarship student extraordinaire, his summer would be filled with long days working his fingers to the bone at the two part-time jobs he’d managed to secure. 

Still, when the final bell of the year rang, he shouted every bit as loud as the 1,500 other mouths that rang out in joy with it.

He was rushed along in the sea of black and yellow blazered students as the doors of Aglionby were thrown open and they were set upon the world like a hive of affluent honey bees. Adam, the worker drone, hidden amongst them, looked no different.

He craned his neck to find his friends in the crowd of students who, despite having cheered to be released from the confines of school, now gathered to linger in its parking lot. To the eye of an outsider or a tourist passing by, it would probably look like some kind of gathering for an expensive car show.  
The parking lot was full of both sleek foreign builds as well as being boxed in by heavy American muscle. Some people thought pet owners looked like their animals. Adam thought the students at Aglionby looked like their cars.

His eye snagged on Emma Coulder, sleek and short, a foreign model from a first world country. Something flirty in the space between her brows, something loud in the ostentatious shade of her nail polish. Just like the sonic blue Jaguar she was leaning against as she talked to Connor Miller, a beefy linebacker whose Ford Raptor was parked next to Emma’s. He didn’t know who was whiter, Connor or his truck. He could guess who was over compensating more, though.

Connor suddenly looked over and caught Adam staring. A lazy smirk crossed the jock’s face, his default setting. Before he shifted into first gear and flipped Adam the bird. He laughed, loud and open, with all the assurance that the world was laughing right along with him. Like he had the Right to Mock Freely, protected under government law.

Under normal circumstances Adam would have just shook his head and kept walking. Connor was a tool but a dull-edged one. A flat head screw driver. He didn’t wield his actions as weapons like some of his other fiendish football pals. Guys like Bodi Jackson and Joseph Kavinsky. Impact Wrench and Angle Grinder. Those guys were power tools. Adam was pretty sure they all did a giant circle jerk after shoving some kid into a locker or taking turns kicking someone’s backpack down the hall like a make-shift soccer ball. 

Besides, as captain of the field hockey team, Adam was relatively exempt from any real teasing or torment. Middle fingers flashed and cuss words slung at each other were more ‘locker room’ talk instead of to intimidate and belittle like the less fortunate students at Aglionby. Comradery vs. torment. Adam counted himself lucky even if guys like Connor and Bodi made his skin crawl. 

Adam really would have liked to flip Connor the bird (and mean it), but he didn’t want Connor to think it was some kind of jock-bonding thing. It’d already taken Adam years to carefully craft his position on the social ladder. High enough that he’d get invited to parties and high-fives for his sports accolades, but low enough that he didn’t catch heat from the real jock-heads for turning down those party invitations or being expected to participate in hazing kids lower on the social ladder.

He’d just settled on a conciliatory nod, an acknowledgement that didn’t encourage the receiver to engage further, when he saw Emma’s eyes darting around the crowd. It was enough time for Adam to look away, to blend into the crowd. But his desire to be seen by Emma, acknowledged even under these circumstances, outweighed his need to disappear.

For being top of the class, his friends always told him he was dumb when it came to his crushes. And he’d been dumb about Emma Coulder since they’d been partnered up for a biology project in Freshman year. 

Her eyes landed on Adam. Even from across the parking lot, Adam saw that summer was in her eyes; flecks of golden sunlight dancing across the water of Lake Michigan. Cotton candy sunsets. The crisp relief of shade on a 100-degree day. They were the prettiest shade of blue he’d ever seen. 

It reminded him of that first day they’d spoken in biology class. The jarring sound of a stool scraping against old oak floors as Emma pulled up next to him. However, Adam hadn’t expected her to get up. A gentleman should always go to the lady, his mother taught him, and so he’d already gained momentum, halfway out of his seat, when their foreheads collided.

Dazed, he’d rubbed his throbbing forehead and blinked his eyes open to see Emma’s brilliant blue ones staring into his only a few centimeters away. He was a goner before she even opened her mouth; the musical laughter escaping her heart-shaped mouth as she apologized for surprising him was only the seal on the envelope. It was embarrassing how much she’d short-circuited his brain, and it took a solid minute before he could stutter out his own apology. There’d been more stuttering after that on his end. But Emma had been kind about it when she could have easily been cruel. Aglionby’s most popular girl. 

And now, in the present, a corner of her lips quirked up, the blazing smile Adam knew she was capable of kept at bay, like the sun hiding behind the hills. 

_Play it cool,_ Adam instructed himself. He gave a little half wave in return. Was that too cool? Adam didn’t want to look like a love-sick puppy, but he didn’t want to come across too reserved either. His friends already gave him crap for being Mr. Aloof. 

But then Emma was looking away, taking a fluttering piece of summer and its promise of endless possibilities with her. 

Adam breathed in deep. This was gonna be a good summer. A great one. The best one yet. This summer he was going to make waves, he vowed right then and there. No more playing it easy. He was tired of playing it safe. Never going after the girl he wanted. Never staying out past curfew. Hell, he’d never even drank a liquor stronger than beer. In terms of social acuity, he was stuck in the remedial classes. 

He breathed in again. The air smelled like pinewood and opportunity. 

A heavy weight suddenly hooked around his neck, dragging him downwards. 

“Oi, Adam Parrish. A.P.! Pick your jaw off the ground; I could smell your lusty teenage hormones all the way from the chem lab.”

Adam, having grown into his near six-foot frame last summer, helped along with his summer jobs working at his dad’s construction site, was able to catch his balance before his friend Blue Sergeant pulled them both to the ground.

Bearing Blue’s weight, the pygmy-sized girl hung from Adam’s neck, arm crooked around him like an overly attached coat hanger. Adam dumped her, gracefully, onto the ground.

“Oogling Emma again, are we?”

Adam breathed through his nose, lips closed tight. He unleashed a tolerating sort of sigh meant to accuse the recipient. Really he did this to buy himself some time. This time, though, he came up with only a half-truth. “I wasn’t oogling. I don’t ‘oogle’.” He knew this wasn’t an effective argument against insatiable Blue, but the summer heat pressed against his skin, the sun blazed happily and endlessly above, birds chatted melodically to each other in nearby trees. It was so overwhelmingly summer that Adam didn’t have the desire to get in a battle of wills and wits with Blue, a tireless soldier.

Adam turned his face to the sun as Blue’s small frame puffed up with a retort. _Lord give me strength,_ he prayed, amused, before another voice joined them.

“Cut the guy some slack. He’s allowed to pine. He’s a straight A student, captain of the field hockey team, and hasn’t even so much as attempted to skip a class. Our precious golden boy deserves to have a vice.”

“Is stupidity a vice?” Blue shot back, a chesire cat grin eating up her entire face.

Adam rolled his eyes as Daniel Elliot joined them. The boys bumped knuckles.

Danny’s head jerked, a quick, practiced move, sending a sweep of shaggy blond hair across his forehead and out of his ocean blue eyes. It landed in a perfectly imperfect disarray. Danny looked like your typical teen heart throb. With his beachy good looks and breezy California attitude. He moved here to Michigan in 7th grade from Long Beach, California. He never seemed to be able to shake his sun-soaked roots. He’d always stood out amongst the Michigan folk. 

Ask anyone there. You could spot another Michiganite a mile away. There was something evergreen about the people who were born there. Like they were pulled from the ground, a roadmap of hidden creeks running through their veins and the stars in their eyes, unpolluted by gaslight cities so far out there on their little peninsula. 

Something earthy and organic in their composure, wild and wary. Shaped by brutal, unforgiving winters, that chill rattling in their bones, making them hardy. Resilient. They were cautious of brilliant things like summer, like California boys. Showy and loud braggarts. Beautiful, fickle things. They knew better than to fall in love with such fickle things.

Except maybe stupidity really was Adam’s vice because up until freshman year he thought he’d had a raging crush on Danny. He peeked at his friend from the corner of his eye; Danny was making a show of threatening to ruffle Blue’s hair, hand outstretched and wide, poised to strike. 

Adam listened to his heartbeat. Tested the dryness of his palms. Swallowed. His heartbeat soldiered on steadily. His palms, callouses and all, were as dry as usual. Nothing stuck in his throat as it bobbed down. 

No red flags.

He suffered no obvious symptoms.

He would pass a Buzzfeed “Do You Have A Crush On Your Best Friend?” quiz with flying colors. 

He probably never even _had_ a crush on Danny, he reasoned. It was stupid. He’d been 13 at the time, what did he know? They’d both hit puberty over that summer. Danny was no longer the gangly blond boy with braces and zits. He’d shot up enough that their basketball coach took notice of him when they’d shoot hoops at the community center. He’d gotten the braces removed, and without bits of hot dog bun stuck in between them, it turned out Danny had a pretty decent smile. 

Danny suddenly looked like that guy in all the teen movies that transferred in and stole all the girls’ hearts with a wink and a shake of his shaggy blond hair. 

Adam had probably just been jealous. That was it. That made total sense. Or it was just some freaky puberty side-effect. Just because Adam was suddenly sweating in places he’d never sweat before when he hung out with Danny that summer didn’t mean he had a crush. It was just mother nature playing a cruel plank. 

Adam had everything perfectly under control now. 

“You gonna man up and make a move this summer, Lover Boy?” Blue asked, shuffling her black bangs back into place from where Danny had ravaged them. 

“Dude, gender norms,” Danny admonished lightly in his surfer boy accent.

Blue, an adamant defender for gender equality, rolled her eyes. “So you gonna woman up and ask Emma out this summer or what, Adam?”

“She’s dating Connor. You know that,” he said, looking over at Prom King and Queen. Aglionby’s golden couple. Connor’s arm was wrapped around her now. She was leaning her face away, giggling as Connor tried to stick his tongue in her ear. Adam don’t know if he wanted to gag from being grossed out or press a hand into his stomach to squish down the jealousy. 

“Connor’s a tool,” Blue offered like it was a solution.

Adam leveled her with a gaze. She shrugged, the green ruffles on her shoulder rustling lazily, equally blasé about Adam’s plight. 

Before Adam could respond, the parking lot exploded with noise. 

“FIGHT!” a voice boomed out. 

And then chaos ensued. 

The previously lounging students all flooded in one direction. A stampede being herded towards the free entertainment.

Danny immediately took off, eager to heed the summons before Adam even had a chance to ask what they should do. He blinked over at Blue instead. 

Blue, for all her advocacy for peace (she was a lover, not a fighter) wore a mischievous grin. “Wanna go see privileged kids in polos beat the crap out of each other?”

Well, when she put it that way…

Adam ran after Blue. He kept behind her, hovering close as they dove into the hoard of students. Because of his height and Blue’s sharp elbows, they were able to make their way to the front of the crowd in seconds.

A circle formed around four students. Adam immediately recognized Bodi Jackson and Joseph Kavinsky. The brutish set of their shoulders and their penchant for fighting made them easy to identify.

The other student next to them was harder to recognize if only because of the blood spurting from his nose that splattered half his face. The fourth and final student, though, was as easily recognizable as the rest.

Head shaved into a buzzcut, it was like watching 3 wolves descending onto a single prey. Except Ronan Lynch was far from being helpless. The unidentifiable boy was hunched over, unmoving, clutching his nose. Kavinsky and Jackson moved forward, however, closing in on Lynch.

All around them the crowd shouted, egging them on. Some shouted words of encouragement, rooting one student or another. But it didn’t matter. Adam already knew who would win.

Kavinksy lunged forward, arm swinging wide, aiming at Ronan Lynch’s head. Lynch ducked and parried, knocking Kavinsky in the face with a right elbow while ramming into Jackson with his left shoulder.

It didn’t matter that it was two against one, Lynch was the superior fighter. He was a growing celebrity in their Midwestern town. He’d been on TV a handful of times. Amateur boxer or fighter or whatever. Adam didn’t know what exactly it was Lynch did. It’d been years since he’d spoken to the guy.

He just knew that Lynch scorned social interactions as must as he scorned academia. Did the kid have any friends? Adam didn’t know. All he knew was that even from several feet away, Lynch looked like he was having the time of his life.

Poster boy for a juvenile delinquent detention center, kids like Lynch didn’t have friends, just enemies. Which would have made sense if Lynch didn’t look like something out of a magazine. GQ. Vogue. Whatever. It was a wonder as Jackson threw a sloppy punch at Lynch that the blocky boy didn’t cut himself on Lynch’s sharp cheekbones alone. 

The funny thing about Lynch was that with skills like his and a face like that, he could be the most popular guy in school if he wanted to be. The fact that he rejected it left Adam feeling begrudgingly impressed. 

The three of them scrapped. Kavinsky managed to land a punch and the crowd ‘oohed’ in collective surprise. Jeers and taunts roared from the crowd. 

A smile sliced its way across Lynch’s cruel mouth. His tongue darted out to probe his injured lip, and found it bloody. His smile grew wider. Hungrier. He launched himself at his opponents with surprising speed.

This was a show to Lynch, Adam realized. He could have easily dispatched Kavinsky and Jackson minutes ago, but he was a lion just playing with his food now. Except, no, with a face like that, all sly, sloping angles, danger lurking under dark lashes, and eyes that flashed keenly, he was more jackal than lion. More carefully crafted weapon than boy.

Adam’s lips pressed into a thin, disapproving line. He felt oddly removed from the whole thing. Like he’d been put on mute while the rest of the crowd’s volume had been turned up. Whatever was affecting them, riling them up into teenage fury, wasn’t affecting him in the same way. 

Gratuitous violence just wasn’t his thing. Even if Lynch was managing to make it look like an art form with the way he dodged and struck, viper-quick, movements precise and untamed. Adam glanced towards the school doors and wondered, briefly, if he should alert a teacher or staff member.

It wasn’t an entirely honorable notion. As much as he felt removed from the whole scene, it’s not like watching a bunch of rich boys beat the crap out of each other over something presumably stupid like insulting the other’s sports car or stealing the other’s girl or something was a hard thing from Adam to do. 

But he was pretty sure Kavinsky or Jackson or both were gonna end up unconscious or dead if someone didn’t restrain Lynch soon. The Power Tool Twins wore matching bloody masks. Meanwhile Lynch looked like he could go another twelve rounds. There were rumors about Lynch. About the year he’d disappeared from Aglionby, only to return the next minus a father and plus an impressively long rap sheet from the police. Adam wasn’t one for believing all the high school melodrama. But seeing Lynch like this, like it wouldn’t be surprising to see blood dripping from his maw, poising over his prey, Adam felt his convictions waver…

Then the sharp cry of a whistle pierced the air, cutting off the roar of the crowd instantly. All at once, like a light shown on a swarm of termites, students began to scatter.

“Until next time, boys,” Lynch called over the rush of bodies. He spat a glob of blood onto the ground at Kavinsky and Jackson’s feet as a parting gift. Raising his hand, he gave them a middle finger salute, his mouth curving into a crooked, ferocious smile before he turned and jogged off into the crowd.

“You’re a dead man, Lynch!” Kavinsky shouted, lunging after Lynch even though the boy had already disappeared. “You hear me, Lynch? DEAD. I’m gonna make you regret ever stepping foot in Aglionby again. Mark my words, you Celtic trash. You shoulda stayed gone.”

Adam could be wrong, but he thought he heard a dark, indulgent laugh answer from somewhere in the crowd. It was the most entranced Adam had been the entire fight. Maybe it was the way Kavinsky said the words, or the boy’s reputation - the most savage of all the jock’s - that had Adam shivering, believing every word spat at Lynch’s retreating figure. 

“C’mon, let’s go before one of the teachers catch us.” Blue was tugging on Adam’s hand. Somehow Danny had appeared at their sides and he was allowing Blue to choral them away from the scene of the fight. 

Adam turned to follow his friends when he got snagged on Kavinsky’s gaze. Intense and fuming, something wild and chaotic stormed in the fiendish boy’s eyes as he latched onto Adam. Like there was still all this electricity warring inside him with no outlet to release it all. Something charged passed between them.

Adam frowned as something flickered in Kavinsky’s dark eyes. Brightening. Like a light bulb going off. The smile Kavinsky gave Adam then made his skin crawl. The smile ate away at Kavinsky’s face like an infectious disease. 

Kavinsky winked at him, and it felt, impossibly, like the boy was saying ‘thank you’. Like Adam had given him something. An idea or an answer or a solution. Then he turned and slunk into the crowd, not bothering to help out Bodi, leaving the other kid to fend for himself. 

Something uneasy bubbled in Adam’s stomach. What the hell was _that?_

**Author's Note:**

> **Thanks so much for reading! Please leave a comment and let me know what you thought. It's really appreciated <3 **


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